Let Charter Schools be as Flexible as Microschools

In a 2001 interview, economist Milton Friedman was pressed to reflect on the vision of a universal school voucher system, an idea he had popularized 46 years earlier. At the time of his interview, progress toward that vision was tepid. Some states or districts operated limited, means-tested voucher programs, and only about 1 percent of public school students were enrolled in charter schools. “Charter schools are a halfway house,” Friedman said. “They are still government schools.”

A quarter of a century later, Friedman’s vision of educational freedom is closer to reality than ever. Twelve states now operate education savings accounts (ESAs) with universal eligibility. Unlike traditional vouchers, ESA funds are not limited to private school tuition. Families can use them for a broader menu of educational expenses, including tutoring, textbooks and curriculum, online courses, educational therapies, and technology. 

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to what this new era of educational freedom means—or should mean—for the older school-choice model of charter schools. That lack of interest is surprising given that after 35 years of charters being pretty much the only publicly financed option for families seeking an alternative to district schools, the suite of options now available is practically limitless.

To begin to answer this question, I, along with Auburn professor David Marshall, surveyed 285 charter school leaders across Arizona, Florida, and Utah—three states with robust charter school sectors that enacted universal ESA programs in 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively. Among other things, we asked whether changes are needed in the charter sector because of the ESA and whether they might have entered the private school marketplace rather than the charter school one if the universal ESA had existed when the charter school opened.

About two-thirds of respondents said that the charter sector should respond to ESAs by becoming less bureaucratic and granting schools greater autonomy. Relatedly, 36 percent of respondents overall said that they would have considered opening a nonpublic school, such as a private or microschool, if the universal ESA was an option at the time. Results are particularly interesting in Arizona, where the proportion of respondents who said they would have considered opening a nonpublic school (42 percent) slightly exceeds the number who claimed that they would not have considered it (38 percent).

Arizona has the longest-running universal ESA program and has seen the largest documented shift from public schools into ESAs. As of March 2026, the number of students who entered the universal ESA program directly from public schools was equivalent to about 3 percent of the state’s public school enrollment. In other words, the responses provided in Arizona might be a harbinger of sentiment in other states with universal ESAs as program participation increases.

Second-guessing among charter leaders points to a problem that policymakers have largely overlooked. Universal ESAs have expanded the choices available to families and would-be school founders, but they have done little for schools that were created before those choices existed. Charter operators determined their organizational form under a policy regime where becoming a charter school was often the only realistic way to operate a publicly financed school outside the traditional district system. Today, an entrepreneur seeking to open the same school might reasonably choose to operate privately and finance it through ESA payments instead. Existing charter schools, however, are effectively locked into choices they made years or even decades earlier.

Charter schools bear certain obligations that private schools do not, including testing mandates, a requirement to serve students with special needs, and non-sectarian status. Those constraints represented an acceptable price for access to public funding when the alternative was charging families tuition. But universal ESAs change that bargain. Accordingly, states with universal ESAs should create a pathway for charter schools to convert voluntarily into private schools.

Consider the school entrepreneur who set out to build a Montessori school. Even though Montessori features practices that do not always fit neatly within the architecture of public schooling—grouping students across multiple ages, progressing through material at different speeds, and following a curriculum that does not necessarily align with the grade-by-grade sequence of state standards and assessments—charter Montessori schools are subjected to the same “accountability” structures as any other charter. In practice, that means that school leaders have to pick between a high-fidelity model that pleases parents or a low-fidelity model that can produce test scores to satisfy authorizers and state bureaucrats. 

Consider, alternatively, a school leader committed to serving students with disabilities, who might value the additional public funding and access to special education services that come with remaining inside the public system. For such a school, charter status may still represent the right bargain.

The proposed charter-private pathway makes room for both models. Schools that prize maximum freedom could leave the charter system for the private market, while those that value the advantages of remaining in the public system could remain charters.

Of course, conversion should not mean simply handing public assets to private operators. States would need clear rules governing buildings, equipment, accumulated funds, and other property purchased with taxpayer dollars. A smooth transition would also require that schools provide adequate notice and a transition plan for currently enrolled families, particularly when conversion would alter admissions, transportation, or special education services or when the ESA allotment would not fully cover tuition and fees. 

These complications are real, but hardly insurmountable. States have already rewritten the rules of school choice for families and for entrepreneurs entering the market today. There is little reason to deny existing charter schools the chance to reconsider a choice they made under a very different set of rules. Educational freedom should not stop at the schoolhouse door.